Former England captain Michael Vaughan has criticised the England management’s handling of a COVID-19 outbreak in their men’s ODI squad ahead of the three-match series against Pakistan.

After three players and four members of the support staff tested positive for COVID-19, the entire group began a period of self-isolation. On Tuesday morning a completely new squad – captained by Ben Stokes – was selected for the series, which forms part of the ICC World Cup Super League.

In a tweet, Michael Vaughan criticised England’s handing of the outbreak, arguing that players who have since returned negative tests should leave isolation. “Putting all the cricket squad in isolation is a complete over reaction [sic]” wrote Vaughan. “Just PCR test all the squad and keep those not positive … or even better treat sports people who are in semi bubbles like we used too … Are you Fit to play ? Yes .. you can then”

According to the NHS website, members of the public are to self-isolate if they’ve been told they’ve been in close contact with someone who has tested positive for COVID-19. The self-isolation period goes until 10 days after the positive test or the day symptoms first arose. Currently, no number of additional tests – even if they are all negative – affects an individual’s self-isolation period.

During Tuesday’s virtual press conference Ashley Giles, the managing director of the England men’s side, was asked to compare England’s approach to the spate of positive cases to that of the Scotland men’s football team, whose squad were free to play in the European Championships despite a positive case to one of their players.

Giles said: “We followed the medical advice more than anything. Given the size of the problem it was clear quite early on it wouldn’t be viable for a number of reasons. Even taking some players forward, whatever we thought the risks were, to then bring other guys in to play with players who could already be infected…it just doesn’t sit well with any of us. That’s unfortunate but we felt this was the cleanest way of doing it.”

Giles also said that had the outbreak been restricted to just one case, the situation may have been dealt with differently. “I think there is a difference between a single positive where you can contact trace, accepting that you might not get every movement, and every minute of the day. But when you have seven positives in an environment, you know that spread has begun and you don’t know where else that may be, because there may be infections in the members of that group that haven’t come out yet untested. So in that case, the only thing to do, you’re looking at a breakout as far as I’m aware, and then you, you need to shut it down.

“Quite possibly [on whether if the number of cases made a difference to the ECB’s response]. Even if we’ve had the two originals we had yesterday morning if the PCRs had come back clear, then yes, we might have been able to treat this very differently but once it went to this number. That was just no chance.”